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Notes From Evictionland

Eviction is practically baked into the way Britain manages its tenanted homes. Here how it played out—over and over again—for my parents.

On the set of “Hanging On” by Cosmosquare Films.

“I’m a different person now,” Mum often says. For a time, she meant that in a good way: stronger, confident, less fearful of ruffling feathers. That’s because for five years between 2017 and 2022 my mum, Hazell, was a leading figure in her community’s campaign to prevent their mass eviction. The scale of the eviction made news: There were television interviews, newspaper features, social media coverage. You name it, and she appeared in it—alongside Dad and her close neighbor friends. Mum’s wide, round eyes, tousled mane of hair, and slight smile made her a beseeching subject of campaign features. It was a mistake to confuse her reserved smile with shyness, though. As coverage snowballed, Mum grew increasingly confident about vocalizing the injustices faced by her private renting community.

Now though, she says this phrase regretfully. She feels different, but burnt and bitter. “My head’s a shed” is a favorite phrase of hers, one that seems to caveat her capacity to deal with anything these days. The adrenaline of the campaign gave way to overwhelm, which gave way to burn out and cynicism. Mum longs to turn the clock back to the time before she was forced into fight-or-flight mode. Not just because her community lost the fight in the end, and was evicted. (She’d been evicted before.) But because this time, there was a compounding weight.

Uncertainty and anxiety hung over her like a cloud as the fight dragged on with bureaucracy and appeals. Campaigning had started to take a toll on her relationships, friendships, and even her health. It seemed inevitable that everyone would lose their homes anyway, since eviction is practically baked into the way Britain manages its tenanted homes. All Mum feels she gained from fighting this one is worse mental health, more gray hairs, and a deep-seated mistrust of private and public individuals with power.

Late in the fall of 2017, my parents and sixty-nine other tenant households picked up an unaddressed leaflet that had been casually pushed through their mailbox. The glossy front page stated that their landlord, a corporate investment company called Pemberstone, was seeking planning permission to demolish their entire tenanted estate in south Leeds and build up to seventy-two new executive-style houses to put up for sale.

It wasn’t exactly an eviction notice, nor was it directly addressed to tenants. Instead, the leaflet was a generic notification of a public consultation event inviting “locals” (whoever they were, if not the tenants) to share ideas “on how the scheme can help meet the needs of the local community prior to submission of a formal planning application.” In other words, the company was seeking advice from tenants on how to demolish their homes and evict them “nicely.”

Mum felt bewildered at first. My parents and brother had lived on the estate for eleven years by that point, and some of their neighbors had been there for decades longer. Residents were settled: they’d decorated and renovated, chosen jobs nearby, raised families, and made deep friendships and memories with neighbors; even drawn lifelong friends onto the estate. It was home. Initial hope that the new properties might be rentals for existing residents gave way to shock and anger when it dawned that current tenants were expected just to shuffle silently off elsewhere.

Within weeks, they mobilized and formed the Save out Homes LS26 campaign, harnessing mainstream and social media to become a national focal point for discussions about the housing crisis. Residents were interviewed by countless journalists and, in 2020, an award-winning short documentary film was made about their fight: Hanging On by Cosmosquare Films. Its director, Alfie Barker, organized for residents to be hoisted up by cranes and filmed literally clinging onto the sides of their homes. The attention bought them time, but not security.

By early 2022, all assured shorthold-tenancy homes had received their formal Section 21 “no fault” eviction notices. Section 21s gave tenants just two months to........

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